


High Humidity

by Tigerine (sealink)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fortune Telling, M/M, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 20:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2322299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealink/pseuds/Tigerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tori and Beni spend a rainy afternoon together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Humidity

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of a fic/art trade with tumblr user Cresii. This takes place in her Onsen AU for Tori and Beni and she gave me permission a while back to upload it.

Tori holds out the umbrella for Beni as he comes out of the convenience store.

“Ah, thanks,” Beni mutters, looking into the plastic sack. “Did you get a spoon?”

“Yeah,” Tori replies, looking down at the smaller man. The sound of rain on the umbrella fills the space between the splashes of their footfalls. Beni reaches into the plastic bag dangling from Tori’s wrist and feels around, pushing his fingers into the corners until he finds what he’s looking for: a wooden ice cream spoon. With a grin, he peels back the paper lid of his lemon ice and scrapes up a chunk of it and presses it against the roof of his mouth.

He makes a noise of alarm and delight at the cold acid on his tongue. “Sour…” he says, looking at Tori with narrowed eyes and puckered lips.

Tori’s lips twitch in a grin. “Couldn’t even wait until we get back?”

“It’s too hot,” complains Beni, digging another chunk of ice out of his cup. One of Tori’s shoulders is getting soaked in the warm downpour; his white shirt slowly plasters itself against his skin.

“Is it supposed to rain like this all day?” Beni ducks his head, looking at the sky beyond the dark blue ribs of the umbrella.

“I don’t know,” Tori says, “but it’s bad for business.”

Beni veers into Tori, nudging him. “You won’t have much to do tonight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Beni laughs. “Just that you’ll be able to be lazy and hang out for a while.”

“I still have to scrub the baths, even if we didn’t have customers.”

“Really?” Beni looks at Tori, the wooden spoon sticking out of his mouth. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. It wouldn’t get dirty if no one used it.”

Tori sighs and ruffles Beni’s hair, earning him an indignant squawk. “Hey, don’t mess up my hair!”

Beni reaches up with one hand, rubbing his ruffled hair down into place. “At least you don’t have to do anything until after closing time, right?”

Tori blinks, looking down at Beni’s face. He looks hopeful, sucking on the wooden spoon with an inquiring pout. The summer heat sends steam from the pavement rising between them. Tori’s t-shirt wicks the tepid rain up under the umbrella, so that even places not directly rained on feel wet and sticky.

“Well, yeah…” Tori responds lamely.

“Let’s just hang out in one of the rooms until dinner, then,” Beni says decisively.

“If any of them are free.”

“I think number six is open.”

The taller youth looks down at his red-haired companion. “You checked?”

“Of course!” Beni grins. “I don’t have anything else to do today, and if you don’t either…” He rolls his shoulders, scooping up another spoonful of lemon ice. “We can hang out.” He smacks the sour-sweet treat in his mouth and shivers, making a sour face. “Besides, I like number six. It’s next to the garden.”

They walk in relative silence, their feet slapping through the puddles, until the bathhouse looms over them, a stately old _ryokan_ built in the 1920s and only modernized ‘enough’. _People come here to get away_ , Tae is fond of saying. _They don’t want to bring their troubles with them._ Tori’s eyes drift to Beni as they enter through the side entrance.

“Welcome home!” Clear’s voice calls out from the kitchen, cheery and bright.

“Yeah,” responds Tori. Beni wends his way through the prep tables to see what Clear is cooking: it’s the sugared omelet for the evening meal. Tori watches Beni watching Clear, and he can’t help but smile a little as Beni oohs appreciatively at Clear’s dexterous use of chopsticks to fold the omelet over in the square pan.

“We’re going to room 6,” Beni says, stealing a carrot from one of the prep trays and scooting out of the kitchen into the back hall, used by servants in the 1920s and now restricted to staff. Well, except for Beni, who all but lives there anyway.

“Ehhh?? Beni! That’s for the guests!”

“Thanks, Clear!” Beni calls as he heads down the hall.

Tori shrugs at Clear’s heated glare and follows Beni, the sack from the convenience store swaying in his hand.

Number 6 is what the staff affectionately calls the honeymoon suite, where the original owner slept while living on the premises; the staff lodgings were completed in the 1950s after the war. The room is redolent with rice straw and wood; the tatami feel welcoming underfoot, pleasantly warm and textured. Beni pulls open one of the heavy doors that looks out onto the garden and then pushes the facing door back along the wooden rails.

“It’s still coming down out there,” he says, watching leaves tremble as raindrops strike them and hang like jewels from their edges. He sits down, his head on the tatami indoors and his legs dangling off the porch. Water from the eaves splashes on his bare legs and he kicks his feet, slinging the drops off as fast as they land on him.

Tori drops the sack from the convenience store next to Beni’s shoulder. Beni folds his arms behind his head and looks up at Tori. “You should change shirts, Tori,” he remarks. “Or at least dry off.”

There’s concern in Beni’s voice; Tori wants to tell him that Beni shouldn’t worry, but he’s turning and walking back out of the honeymoon suite before he realizes he’s walking.

“Hey, grab your cards, too!” Beni yells after him.

The staff quarters aren’t far; he lives there as part of his deal with Tae that lets him earn his keep in exchange for room and board and a small salary. It’s a good life for him; quiet and honest. He likes the ambiance of the _ryokan_. The old wood and large tatami rooms feel good to him; the communal baths feel like the place someone might go with their family on a weekend trip.

The hearty food isn’t bad either. Clear is a great chef, better than this old place deserves, but he likes the atmosphere of the old building, natural-rock baths and established gardens. He says it reminds him of his grandfather wistfully, the way someone talks about a thing that isn’t there anymore. Mink, the caretaker and handyman, also lives in the staff quarters with Tori, but he is not a very chatty person.

Tori grabs his _hanafuda_ as he slips into a black tank top; the heat is still stifling, even with the rain. When he gets back to the room, Beni rolls over to look at him and the underside of his thigh sticks to the porch. He has another ice cream open, the spoon in his mouth.

“Did you get them?”

Tori holds up the cards in reply.

“Do me,” Beni says, and for an instant, Tori feels something tighten up in his gut. “You haven’t done my fortune in forever.”

His fortune. Of course.

Tori’s skill as an oracle has nothing to do with the cards he uses; he thinks he would have the same kind of results from using Tarot or the Book of Changes. But he likes the _hanafuda_. They are thick and snappy; putting them down feels important, like dealing with weighty things.

Beni watches as Tori opens the box.

“What kind of reading do you want? One card or full-deck?”

Beni shrugs. “Full-deck.”

“What questions do you want to ask?”

Beni glances at Tori and then shrugs. “What, When, Where, Who?”

Tori nods briefly and then hands the deck’s plastic box off to the youth next to him and begins to shuffle. Tori slots the heavy plastic cards against each other, collating them, sacking them up in his palm and beginning again. He waits for a while until Beni…

“Stop.”

Tori’s hands stopped immediately and he dealt out the cards, four at a time in five rows. Matching and discarding, slowly, the suits emerge as Tori’s dealing of the cards completes them.

“For ‘what’, we have April,” he says softly, his voice drifting into the lull of rain drops on the gravel below. He pulls the suit to the side, arranging the pictures on the cards so they form an image of a bird swooping up and away from a recumbent wisteria, laden with blossoms. “This typically means relationships when asked as part of a question like this.”

“What kind of relationships?”

Tori shrugs. “Any kind. Work relationships, family, love life. Could be anything.” He doesn’t miss the way Beni’s eyes lower thoughtfully to the cards and then to his own hands, folded together on the tatami.

The cards continue to fall and soon the second completed suit is pulled aside, a chrysanthemum blooming red and yellow on the cards. “September.” He looks up at Beni, the still, humid air of summer hanging hot between them.

“Does that literally mean September or is it more metaphors?”

“Could be literal.” He doesn’t mention that the suit also means unrest.

Tori continues to deal out the cards, and the third completed suit spills out of his hands and he tries to avoid the painful coincidence of it, but he knows that the feeling that’s roiling in the pit of his stomach is that it’s not a coincidence. “November.”

The other name for the suit is ‘Rain’. It usually refers to domesticity.

He continues dealing out the cards, watching the last set of matches, the answer for “who”. Three of the cards have surfaced and wait for their fourth member. Tori knows without looking that the card that is missing from the picture of “January” is the one with the symbol of fidelity on it. In the suit, the graceful, poised crane is the centerpiece. Without it, there is no fidelity, no good fortune.

He reaches the bottom of the deck and flips over the last card. It’s a piece of the iris suit, “May”.  

Beni leans forward. “No match?”

Tori shakes his head. “Apparently the cards don’t have anything to say about the ‘who’.”

“Way to go, cards,” Beni grumbles, turning back over onto his back. The edge of his t-shirt has crept up above the waistband of his shorts. His skin is pale there, where the sun hasn’t touched it, and it moves up and down with Beni’s breathing, the judo-hardened muscles twisting as he dangles his feet off the edge.

Tori looks at the cards and then at the uncompleted suit, January. It also means “men”, in the same way that March means “women”. The last card, the iris, he rolls over his fingers thoughtfully, thinking about the fifth of May and wondering if Beni would ever catch the hint of the cards turning up the month that contained “Boy’s Day” when they were looking for a card to complete “men”.

He snorts, a soft sigh leaving his nose as he sweeps the cards together, stacking them neatly and tucking them back into the box.

 


End file.
